Saturday, March 31, 2018

One of the dramatic elements
of Doomsday Clock and the various
prequels in the story arc is the way characters are brought onstage. This began
with the very appearance of the Comedian's button and Dr. Manhattan back in DC Rebirth #1, and the appearance of Superman's
logo at the end of The Button and
continues into the current series. Perhaps the biggest surprise of DC #4 is the fact that it centers so
completely around the new Rorschach, one of Johns' new characters. A series
that is about the encounter between two worlds and only has eight more issues
to do so is still setting things up, and if one of these issues is devoted to
one character, there must be a good reason for it.

Readers may be tempted to
find this issue – with no Superman, little Batman, little Veidt, and no
Mime and Marionette – advancing the main plot comparatively little, but this
only highlights a number of brief, intriguing connections to the main plot.
Devoting an entire issue to the new Rorschach indicates in flashing red letters
that he is going to become a very important figure. The remaining issues of Doomsday Clock are likely to feature a
battle for this young man's soul.

As previously hinted, new
Rorschach is Reggie Long, the son of Rorschach's psychologist, Dr. Malcolm
Long. He was orphaned by Veidt's alien plot, and also driven mad by it. This
issue has so many scenes that reflect other scenes, in itself or in previous
works, that it can make you feel like you're looking down a hall of mirrors. We
see Reggie twice spend time in mental asylums; once on each Earth. Both times, his
placement there earns our sympathy, but is not without justification. Both
times, he meets superheroes who are in there with him; both times, that
superhero helps him escape. We should perhaps note the asymmetries where they
occur: One, Watchmen's Mothman, is a
figure out of the past, whereas the other, Saturn Girl, is from the future.

Another double-up in Doomsday Clock that is highlighted by
the Mothman's story is the similarity between the Watchmen old-timers and the
Justice Society. Both teams were driven underground by pressure from their
respective governments. It is interesting to note that this plot development
– copied many times in subsequent
goverment-vs-superhero stories – began with a 1979 JSA story scripted by
Paul Levitz. Why is this relevant? Both backstories name-check the real-life
HUAC which advanced the anti-Communist witch-hunt of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In both cases, the superheroes are confronted by a McCarthyesque government
panel and are driven into retirement or other unpalatable options. What makes
this similarity relevant is the ongoing Johnny Thunder cameos, particularly in Rebirth wherein he implies that he chose
to protect them by making them "go away" when the committee asked
them to unmask. Placing this in the larger Doomsday
Clock story suggests some complicated relationships between timelines. If
Johnny Thunder commanded the JSA to disappear, and Dr. Manhattan is also
manipulating timelines, then we have two forces altering history for the worst.
That seems overly complex. Perhaps Johnny Thunder and/or the Thunderbolt are
agents of Dr. Manhattan. In fact, the Thunderbolt seems like an appropriate
candidate to be Dr. Manhattan given
their similarity. In any case, this reflects on how events in the Watchmen universe
may have served as a pattern for alterations made to the DCU.

A scene with striking
overtones of older DC / JSA lore is the rooftop encounter in which Reggie and Mothman
met. Reggie was about to commit suicide by jumping from a height but didn't
because he coincidentally met Mothman, who also seemed to be jumping to his
death. The original Mister Terrific, Terry Sloan, was contemplating suicide
when he happened upon a woman who was also intending to commit suicide by
jumping from a bridge. Later, Michael Holt was also contemplating suicide when
the Spectre spoke to him, leading him down the path to becoming the second
Mister Terrific. Reggie has a similar encounter but his path was already turned
in a dark direction, and he became a new Rorschach.

So consider now the life of
Reggie Long thus far, and the various origin stories it resembles. He loses his
father and mother and seeks vengeance upon their killer. This is Batman's
origin. He sees the gravest horrors and emerges from a fire to begin a life of
adventuring. This is Rorschach's origin. He contemplates suicide but meets
someone else and this saves him. That's Mister Terrific's origin. Look at the
cover of this issue, also its first panel: The tall stack of pancakes and syrup
remind Reggie of the wealth of Batman. That's not his story: Even the smallest
bedroom in Wayne Manor feels too luxurious for him. This Rorshach identity
surely isn't working out. Going forward, I think we're very likely to see
Reggie turned by good influences from the DCU into something more akin to
Mister Terrific.

Meanwhile, in the
goodness-deprived Watchmen Universe, Mothman's life ends as a bit of a bad
joke, as a moth kills itself by being drawn to flames. This is one of three
times in the issue that we see an insect incinerated: The Mothman is one. The
other two are mosquitoes, zapped by electricity. This pattern is also not
coincidence, and readers who felt that this issue was too slow-paced were
missing portentous hints as that pattern went forward. We (and Reggie) see a
mosquito flying down the Arkham hallway, and into a bug zapper hanging in front
of Killer Croc's cell. Later, we see the Mothman killed by fire. But the third
time, looking very much like the first, the mosquito is not killed by the bug
zapper. Just short of entering the device, the second mosquito is killed from behind by a white bolt that leaves
a trail of smoke with Dr. Manhattan's hydrogen atom insignia: The second
mosquito is killed by Dr. Manhattan. We also see the photo that reminds him of
his past life as Jon Osterman floating in the breeze. Why – what does this
tiny, insignificant event mean? First, it tells us that Dr. Manhattan is
present at that point in Arkham Asylum. Is that a clue to his "secret
identity"? Maybe. So far, if we find out that some Arkham resident is
"really" Dr. Manhattan in disguise, it would be a hollow reveal:
We've hardly seen any of them doing anything interesting. Perhaps more
significant, it shows us that Dr. Manhattan is at work in the DCU, tampering
with events. And more specifically, it shows us that he is in Arkham as Saturn
Girl meets Reggie Long. This is something he wanted to have happen, or at
least, condones.

That visitor from the future,
Saturn Girl is smiling and cheery throughout her brief appearances in this
issue. This leaps out as an anomaly. We first saw Saturn Girl's current visit
to the 2010s in DC Rebirth #1. She is
serene, saying that everything will be all right. Later, during the opening
moments of The Button crossover, she
is terrified and panicked, telling us that Superman will not arrive to help and
everyone will die. Now, she's serene again. What is responsible for the
whiplash turn in her demeanor? Is this mere emotional instability? Probably
not, because she refers to knowledge of events that drive her responses.But why the alternating responses? It's
probably too soon for us to know, but Dr. Manhattan's manipulation of timelines
seems a likely answer. Remember, Saturn Girl is not
precognitive – she's telepathic, and happens to be from the future.
What we're likely seeing at this point is an experiment that Dr. Manhattan is
carrying out, and Reggie Long, a "mosquito" in comparison to the
vast, indifference of Dr. Manhattan, is probably on a path towards the light
(to use this issue's metaphor), from the darkness of Rorschach and Veidt's grand
tragedy to the light of Mister Terrific, a character who, in both previous
versions, turned from suicide to hope.

Nevertheless, we should
remember what happened to that mosquito. Dr. Manhattan killing for no reason is
chilling. Because he can just as easily turn that power to killing anyone else.
But the photo of Jon and Laurie might give us hope. He's still clinging to
memories of humanity. He is letting Saturn Girl take Reggie down a path towards
the light, and we need that experiment to succeed so that Dr. Manhattan can
believe in the light. Later, he's going to turn things dark again, as Saturn
Girl's panic revealed. But later still in this series, he's going to meet the
greatest representative of the light. He's going to meet Superman.

Monday, February 19, 2018

A
major fraction of Final Crisis is
devoted to the subplot I'll call the Monitor plot. Based on Marv Wolfman's
characters who are central to Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Monitors are beings who monitor activity in the 52
Earths of the Multiverse. The Monitors go through a great deal of drama on
their own plane, interacting with beings in the Multiverse on a few occasions.
The Monitor plot consists of a few scenes in Final Crisis proper, plus the entire two issues of Superman Beyond. In this third and final installment of my FC review that begins here, I'll focus on the mysterious Monitor plot.

It's
easy enough to understand the Monitor plot on the surface level: Who says and
does what, when. It is much harder to understand what the point of it all is:
Why are these things happening? How does it relate to the Darkseid plot? What rules
are at work? What is Morrison trying to say with this story?

At
the risk of overgeneralizing, I don't think readers, overall, "got"
the Monitor plot, at least not in detail. I think for some readers, the
portions of the Monitor plot in FC
proper were a path to nowhere: A lot of things happening, some of them apparently
very important, but with no clarity as to what was happening or why, or what it
meant. Reading online reviews, I find some readers regretting FC's complexity and indecipherability.
Some readers seem overall pleased with FC,
but discuss only the Darkseid plot, as though the Monitor plot just didn't
happen. And though many very astute readers pierce the veil of allegory and get
a general read on Morrison's overall intentions, they still seem, as I did,
doubtful about the details, such as who, exactly, does Mandrakk represent? We
had no explanation as to the Whys of this story: Why does this stuff happen?
Even the cause-and-effect relationship between the Darkseid plot and the
Monitor plot seems like a riddle: Did Darkseid's attack somehow prompt
Mandrakk's attack on Superman? Or did Mandrakk's desire to attack somehow use
Darkseid as his pawn? And Morrison once said that when we read Final Crisis we will realize why this is the final crisis: Did
anyone come away with that understanding in concrete terms?

Between
2009 and 2017, I re-read Final Crisis
many times. I enjoyed many portions, particularly, the Big Five superheroes'
victories in the Darkseid plot, and I grasped, in general terms, how the
Monitor plot illustrated Superman's victory on some high cosmic level, but the
pieces didn't fit together very well, and I felt that something remained
unexplained. Then, something clicked. I saw a pattern on one page that seemed
to fit, and when I considered wider portions of the story, those seemed to fit as well. I believe there's a key to Final Crisis' Monitor plot, and once one
sees it, the whole story becomes more explicable: One can see Morrison's
intended message, and the logic of the Monitor plot goes from murky and
arbitrary to exceedingly clear. Ultimately, one can see not only why Mandrakk appears after Darkseid's
defeat, but understand that the choice of page and even the exact panel where
he appears are not arbitrary. I hope that those who read this post will find Final Crisis much clearer than they
found it before, and that they see the final showdown with Mandrakk to be a
remarkable climax in its own right, one of the most thrilling victories of
Superman and his allies.

Just The Facts

There
is a surface level to the Monitor plot, in which the Monitors are powerful
beings in the DC Multiverse. As the surface level is fairly clear and the basis
of the deeper level, I'll begin by laying out its facts.

In
the distant past, a group of Monitors, initially one and then more, began to
oversee the Multiverse. Long ago, the best of them, Dax Novu, became corrupt
and, as the hideous evil Monitor, Mandrakk, was exiled to a crypt where he must
wait for a Doomsday Clock to reach zero.

A
surreptitiously evil Monitor named Rox Ogama frames a good, young Monitor named
Nix Uotan for the destruction of his world, Earth-51. Disguising his own guilt,
Ogama pretends to defend Uotan. Uotan, to the chagrin of his lover, Weeja Dell,
is punished by being exiled to the "germ world" of Earth-0. A
Monitrix named Zillo Valla consoles Weeja Dell, offering a brief summary of how
contact with the germ worlds have introduced time and story, beginnings and
endings, amongst the Monitors themselves. Uotan lives as an ordinary young man
on Earth-0, trying to regain his previous status.

Zillo
Valla summons several of the Multiverse's Supermen to help her and her world
escape the wrath of Mandrakk. After a chase through Multiversal space, leading
to Limbo, the Supermen find an infinite book that contains all stories,
including the history of the Monitors mentioned above. Ultraman, who celebrates
evil, triumphantly announces that the book ends with destruction: Evil wins in
the end. Superman, joins his opposite, Ultraman, in inhabiting a Thought Robot
in the Overvoid. In this form, Superman defeats Mandrakk, who recklessly
destroys Zillo Valla during the battle.

Captain
Marvel voyages the Multiverse, eventually joining up with the Question, Renee
Montoya, to form a cavalry of all the Supermen. Rox Ogama transforms into a new
incarnation of Mandrakk and recruits Ultraman, transforming him into a Vampire
Superman.

Rounded
up during Darkseid's occupation of Earth, Uotan is transformed into a new kind
of Monitor/hero dubbed the "Judge of All Evil." When Darkseid is
defeated, Mandrakk and Ultraman arrive to confront Superman, having just
dispatched Supergirl, the Radiant, and the Spectre. Superman activates the
Miracle Machine and fixes all the damage done by Darkseid's forces. The
Supermen of the Multiverse arrive along with Hal Jordan's force of Green
Lanterns. Nix Uotan takes over, summoning an army of angels, the animal heroes
led by Captain Carrot, and the Forever People of the Fifth World. With heat
vision, the Supermen lay waste to Mandrakk and Ultraman, with the Green
Lanterns delivering the final blow.

Back
in the Monitor's plane, Nix Uotan is vindicated and acquitted, and he commands
the Monitor to stop interfering with the characters on their worlds. He is
reborn, again, as the young man back on Earth-0.

It's
clear that Morrison did not create the Monitors as just another group of DC
characters. As readers noticed, the story hints, and Morrison confirmed, they
represent storytellers; their names, in fact, are all derived from the gods of
writing in different mythologies. To understand the story, then, we have to
understand which real people the Monitors represent, and how their interactions
in the story convey a message.

Some
readers have suggested a very tight interpretation of the Monitors, where each
Monitor stands for one particular writer, and wherein the Monitor plot, then,
tells the story of specific comic book writers. Moreover, some readers have
suggested that Mandrakk stands for Alan Moore, and that Nix Uotan stands for
Grant Morrison himself. Meanwhile, it would be logical to suggest that a few of
the remaining Monitors who represent specific Earths of the Multiverse
represent the writers who created those worlds; e.g., Rox Ogama is Frank
Miller, and Doug Moench would be Zillo Valla, and Weeja Dell is some writer
associated with Marvel Comics. I'll say in the early going that there are
excellent reasons to make those associations. I will offer, however, that it is
difficult to map the entire Monitor plot according to those precise identities.
For one, there are far too few named Monitors with sufficient screen time to
tell a very rich story about writers. And if Morrison wanted to tell a story
about writers, would he really make Doug Moench one of the principal figures
and leave no space for, say, Jerry Siegel, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve
Ditko, Len Wein, Dennis O'Neil, Cary Bates, Elliot Maggin, Marv Wolfman, John
Byrne, and Geoff Johns, to name just a few? I also find it extremely unlikely
that Grant Morrison would assert that Frank Miller is a bad guy who is framing
good writers for crimes they didn't commit. To play it on the safe side, I will
suggest that each Monitor be seen as a school of thought, a movement among
writers, editors, and/or fans, a style of approaching the stories, and in cases
where a movement can be reduced to only one writer, so be it: There are
certainly scenes where we can seem to pin a Monitor's identity down to one
writer, but I will suggest that, even then, the message is intended to be
broad.

So
what is that message? Clearly, there are bad Monitors whom we root against: the
two incarnations of Mandrakk corresponding to Dax Novu and Rox Ogama. There are
good Monitors whom we root for: Nix Uotan and Weeja Dell. Zillo Valla is
perhaps between the two or plays different roles at different times. Reader
analysts and Morrison offer many tidbits about what is good and what is bad
here, but we have to be careful not to overgeneralize and call the bad side all
instances of dark, grim and gritty storytelling. Recall that Final Crisis itself has a lot of dark
stuff in it, ranging from J'onn J'onzz catching a flaming spear through the
chest to supervillains discussing the rape of female superheroes. And no matter
how we interpret what is "bad" storytelling according to this
parable, what bearing does that have on Morrison's promise that this is the
truly final crisis?

There
is a key that will make the Monitor plot instantly comprehensible, but before
explaining what that is, I will need to include a couple of interludes that
provide necessary background.

Interlude: Alan Moore's
Superman Stories

In
a short span of time, Alan Moore gave us two of the most highly regarded
Superman stories of all time. "For The Man Who Has Everything," in
1985's Superman Annual #11 and
"Whatever Happened To the Man of Tomorrow?" published in two issues
in 1986 had a tremendous impact on the publication history of Superman. These
stories, like many of Moore's works were good – very good. If you consult
various best-of lists, you'll find both of those high on the list of best
Superman stories ever. Moreover, the unpublished Moore concept Twilight of the Superheroes would have
been another monumental Superman story, and a story, Kingdom Come, arguably inspired by Twilight of the Superheroes, is also on many such best-of lists.

FTMWHE
and WHTTMOT have a surprising amount in common, and an obvious precedent that
seems to have gone unmentioned. First, both result in the destruction, or
deconstruction, of Superman, though neither shows his biological death. In
each, Superman is shown alive, but not as Superman, and in both cases, he is an
ordinary man with a wife and children. In the one case, Superman chooses to end
his own superhero career, and in the other, he reveals his fondest wish to be
an alternate reality in which he never began it. They both have further
similarities: They show Superman hurting someone with his heat vision. They
discuss, but do not depict, Superman's death. They both have main action set in
the exact same place, Superman's Fortress of Solitude, as Superman faces off
against enemies he cannot physically beat. WHTTMOT also shows Superman abandon
his oath never to kill; not only does he deliberately kill Mxyzptlk (with the
admittedly excellent excuse of needing to save the world), but he is willing to
kill the Legion of Supervillains, as the mind-reading ability of Saturn Woman
reveals. Moreover, in WHTTMOT, Superman not only decides that he needs to retire;
in the identity of Jordan Elliot, he looks back on his time as Superman, and
denounces the entire idea of his
ever having been Superman: "He was over-rated and too wrapped up in
himself." Fans should take this line like a sock to the jaw; why would a
Superman book portray Superman calling himself over-rated?

As
a sidebar, and a check regarding Moore's originality, both of them owe a debt
of gratitude to 1980's then-recent Superman
II, which also shows Superman
facing an enemy he cannot physically beat, and also shows a principal showdown in the Fortress of Solitude, and also shows Superman renouncing his
powers so that he can settle down as an ordinary man with Lois Lane. However,
Moore's story reverses the chronology: In Superman
II, Superman realizes that he is needed by his world. In Moore's stories,
Superman decides, consciously or emotionally, that he is not. To a considerable
extent, if you rearranged the order of Superman
II so that he defeated Zod, then gave up his powers to be with Lois Lane,
you'd have an Alan Moore story.

The
destruction of Superman is not a plot trajectory that Moore happens upon by
happenstance. Notice that FTMWHE also shows us Batman receiving his heart's desire, and Batman also
wishes that he had never been
Batman. And as seen in Watchmen, the
Green Lantern story "Tygers", The
Killing Joke and elsewhere, Moore shows superheroes self-destructing –
morally, tactically, and fatally – because that is the end that Moore desired.

Twilight of the Superheroes
is a story that was proposed by Moore in 1987 but never written. I discuss it
here, but suffice it to say, it also destroys Superman and DC's other
superheroes. Not only does Superman abandon his role as a superhero, to make
himself one of many factions ruling Earth like a superpowered Game of Thrones, but he ultimately
chooses to kill his rivals, in a battle to the death with J'onn J'onzz and then
is himself killed, by Green Lantern Sodam Yat.

It
was very soon after those monumental Moore-Superman stories that Time Magazine,
in a 1988 cover story, had Superman say that while he's beaten every villain in
his stories, turning fifty years old may be his greatest challenge yet. Note
that it is the in-story Superman who has beaten his villains, and it is the
Superman who exists as a fictional entity in our world who was turning fifty
and facing the challenge of maintaining his legend while also retaining
relevance. The Time article notes that Superman's current challenge was "a
deplorable element that might be called adultification, in which a figure
created for children is subjected to adult concerns." Moore took
adultification to the extreme, in which Superman could no longer be Superman,
morally or otherwise. For Moore, Superman had to forego his principles. For
Moore, Superman had to stop being Superman and die. And in the immediate wake
of Moore's stories, the world saw that Superman might eventually face an
existential challenge. It was on the cover of Time magazine.

Lest
there be any doubt, Final Crisis is
in part a response to Moore's Superman stories, and to Moore in general. The
three aforementioned stories are each quoted by Final Crisis, verbally or visually, whether through direct intent
by Morrison or by the freshness of Moore's work in Morrison's memory as he
crafted a response to it. Some of the shout-outs include:

• In
FTMWHE, Mongul says that the Black Mercy gives its victims their "heart's
desire." In FC, Libra uses that same phrase, and Luthor later repeats it
twice.

•
The title of Twilight of the Superheroes
is remixed by Libra on the very same page: He promises "An end to the age
of superheroes. A full-on, no bull&@%& twilight of the gods." And note very carefully: We do not see
Libra's "heart's desire" emerge from a drawing of Libra but from the
image on the screen of a cellphone brand-named DAMRUNG, which is a pun on
"Samsung" but also an abbreviation of the German (via Richard Wagner)
word "Götterdämmerung" which means "Twilight of the Gods."
It is the author of Twilight of the
Superheroes who tells us that the destruction of the superheroes is one's
"heart's desire." Note that this makes two references to Moore's
Superman stories in the same panel.
I will also add that Libra was created by Len Wein, who brought Moore onboard
at DC. And, though I saw several reviewers note the significance of the phrase, "twilight of the god," I haven't seen anyone link it to Moore's title.

•
In WHTTMOT, Superman witnesses the violent death of one of his friends and is
attacked by deadly force in the Daily Planet newsroom, an attack that leaves
him physically unharmed but standing in the newsroom in his Superman costume
after his Clark Kent clothes have been blasted off of him. This also happens in
Final Crisis #2, and the art is quite
parallel. (In WHTTMOT, Superman's Clark Kent identity is thereby destroyed
forever. In FC, nobody is left conscious to see Clark revealed as Superman.)

•
In FTMWHE, Jor-El is a broken, bitter old man who is disgraced by his failed
prediction of Krypton's destruction. When Mandrakk confronts Superman, he opens
with the taunt, "Your father failed to save his world."

Further
references to Moore works include Morrison's take on Dr. Manhattan in Superman Beyond, a particular reference
to Swamp Thing, the Superman derivative hero named Supreme, and a possible
reference to TheLeague of Extraordinary Gentlemen that I'll mention later.

However,
the similarities and shout-outs go still deeper yet. And this brings us to one
more interlude that turns into an explanation of exactly how these works are
related.

Interlude 2: Substory S

Imagine,
if you will, the following plot elements occurring within a comic book story.
The events jump around a bit in their relatedness, so it is more of a
sub-sequence of a story than a subplot. I'll call this Substory S.

1)
Brainiac 5 knows that Superman is going to fight a battle for his and the
world's survival.

2)
Brainiac 5 shows Superman a machine that can win the battle for Superman. Brainiac
5 does not give Superman the
machine; he simply has him look at
it.

3)
Superman must face off against a being of pure evil at the command of godlike
power.

4)
A shield is placed around the scene of Superman and his enemy's upcoming
battle. Other superheroes, even very powerful ones including Captain Marvel,
cannot break the shield open.

5)
Other characters present in immediate proximity to this battle include Batman,
Wonder Woman, Luthor, and Supergirl; it is made clear that Supergirl has
recently been vanquished.

6)
We are reminded of Superman's oath not to kill.

7)
Superman and Lois Lane have a conversation immediately before the ultimate
showdown.

8)
As Superman prepares to use the machine that Brainiac 5 mentioned, the evil
godlike opponent announces that he will destroy Superman.

9)
Superman responds to the threat with "That's right" / "You're
right about that" but it is an ironic response; Superman does not believe
that the villain is right, but that he himself will vanquish the villain
definitively rather than vice versa.

10)
Superman delivers the fatal blow to the villain, and the villain is destroyed.

11)
Even though the godlike evil villain is destroyed, Superman now faces a threat
to his continued existence.

That's
a very specific list of events and
situations. Do you know in which story those events occur? Trick question.
Substory S – every one those details – occurs during the end of Final Crisis and Substory S – every one
those details – also occurs during
the end of Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"
This is not a coincidence. At the final showdown, even the page layout matches,
closely. Click to zoom in on how the climactic scenes align.

That
illustrates how points 8, 9, and 10 line up on a single page, but alignments
between the two stories go back to the first scene of FC #6, when Brainiac 5 shows Superman the Miracle Machine,
mirroring the way in WHTTMOT, Brainiac 5 gave Superman a statuette with the
Phantom Zone projector. The alignment between the two stories is so detailed
that in neither one does Brainiac 5 give Superman the machine, and this is
highlighted with the dialogue in FC
when Brainiac 5 says, "Look at it, Superman! Just look!" In WHTTMOT,
Lois Lane similarly tells Superman, regarding Brainiac 5's gift, "Take
another look at it, Superman! Look at what it's holding!"

The
stories align in far more ways than could possibly be coincidental, taking us
from Brainiac 5 showing Superman a machine, "Look at it, Superman!", to
a conversation with Lois Lane, Captain Marvel trying to help, Superman's
"That's right," and then the final zap of the colorfully glowing
god-villain. Morrison obviously wrote many details into FC with Moore's story in mind.

The
end of Final Crisis, with the
Darkseid plot concluding and the Monitor plot coming to a head, is a response
to, sequel to, and a rewrite of Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man
of Tomorrow?" Morrison's handling of Substory S is key to understanding
his intentions with the Monitor plot. By putting Superman in the same situation
that Alan Moore put Superman in to end him, Grant Morrison shows us how the
story should go – how Superman's story really goes.

Compare and Contrast

Given
the great degree of similarity between Moore's and Morrison's versions of
Substory S, we should pay attention to the differences between them, because
therein is the heart of Morrison's message.

In
Moore's story, Superman is isolated from his allies by a barrier. In Morrison's
story, Superman bashes his way through the barrier with one punch at the end of
FC #6. In Morrison's story,
therefore, Superman has assistance from his allies, most notably Batman (who,
inside the compound, had already shot Darkseid with Radion), the Flashes,
Wonder Woman and even Luthor and Sivana.

In
Moore's story, if Superman kills, he must renounce his superpowers and give up
being Superman forever. FC has
Darkseid articulate this, taunting Superman: "Kill me, Superman. Kill the
frail old man [Turpin] upon whose soul Darkseid fed and fattened! How can you
hurt a foe made of people? … Kill him. Kill me and you kill everything!"
This is the predicament. Superman can physically kill Turpin's body, but then
– because this is a remake of Moore's story – Superman would actually
lose. But that's not how it goes, because Batman already fired a gunshot that
specifically doomed Darkseid while leaving Turpin alive. And then the Flashes
show up, bringing Death personified to take Darkseid out of Turpin. In
Morrison's story, Superman is not alone, and the importance of alliance and
loyalty is spelled out in Wally West's dialogue, "Think I'd leave you to
do this on your own? Together,
Barry! We're going in together and we're coming back together!" And so Batman,
the Flashes, and then Wonder Woman all do their parts to reduce Darkseid to
nothing more than a disembodied presence glowing like a neon sign that, as it
happens, looks a bit like glowing Mxyzptlk in WHTTMOT.

In
Moore's story, once Superman has beaten Mxyzptlk, he faces an even greater
threat: Moore writing Superman into a self-defeating renunciation of himself
and his powers. In Morrison's story, Mandrakk, representing Moore, shows up and
demands that Superman give up and be devoured.

At
this point, we can explain a few events in FC
that happen so quickly that they seem incongruous with the narration. First, we
see Supergirl slung over Ultraman's shoulder, though we never saw them
fighting. Second, we see the Spectre and the Radiant (who excused themselves to
go handle other business at the end of FC:
Revelations) on the ground. These jarringly abrupt appearances of Supergirl and
the Spectre, both already defeated, translate directly onto the previous use of
those characters by Moore. The almost bizarrely abrupt appearance of the
vanquished Supergirl represents her bleak cameo in WHTTMOT, in which her then-recent
death in Crisis on Infinite Earths
was on Superman's mind when a much younger version of Supergirl visited him
along with the Legion of Super-Heroes. It was to make these stories parallel
that Morrison showed us Supergirl and not, say, Hourman or Alan Scott on
Ultraman's shoulder, and why we didn't see Mandrakk and Ultraman defeat
Supergirl in battle; Mandrakk was showing
Superman his defeated cousin, but he didn't defeat her.

And, when Mandrakk arrives,
he throws the Spectre and Radiant to the floor, and says that he "fed on
these 'servants of God,' defenders of this universe. Drained now.
Meaningless." That last word highlights that Mandrakk is not just some
big, bad supervillain of the DCU; he's a writer who can make characters weak or
meaningless. And why the Spectre? In ordinary terms, the Spectre is the most
powerful character among DC heroes, almost impossible to defeat. But Alan Moore
defeated the Spectre. He did this in Swamp Thing #50, when his Great Evil Beast drains the Spectre and leaves him
lying limp on the ground. Compare the artwork. But for the addition of Final Crisis: Revelations' The Radiant,
the art showing the Spectre prostate is similar in the two stories. As with
Supergirl, the introduction of powerful characters already beaten comes across
as jarring and unforgivably brief to a reader expecting conventional superhero
storytelling. We see Supergirl and the Spectre already beaten because they were
already beaten when Moore tried to kill off Superman.

But Final Crisis and the Monitor plot are not simply responses to one
specific story. There are suggestive connections to other Moore stories.
Captain Marvel, J'onn J'onzz, Green Lanterns, and Batman all have key roles in Twilight of the Superheroes. In that
story, Superman thinks he can trust Captain Marvel, but near the end, he finds
out that who he thought was Captain Marvel had actually been J'onn J'onzz the
entire time; Superman and the Martian Manhunter fight until Superman kills the
Martian, then a Green Lantern, Sodam Yat, kills Superman. Finally, it's
revealed that Batman has been a key player in staging all of this bloodshed. In
Final Crisis, Superman tells
Mandrakk, "I counted on Captain Marvel of Earth-5 to come through."
Earlier, Superman delivers the eulogy on Mars, beginning, "J'onn J'onzz
was my friend. Always there, always strong, always reliable… He was someone I
could confide in." Superman holds what seemed to have been Batman's body
in body language recalling the Pietà.
And finally, Green Lanterns are part of the cavalry who finally slay Mandrakk.
Are these points all intended to address, very specifically, the beats in
Moore's unpublished story? Maybe they're intended. On the other hand, if
accidental, they highlight the striking difference between how Morrison writes the
characters and how Moore does. In Morrison's version, the heroes trust one
another, fight for one another, and believe in one another. In Moore's version,
a physical barrier keeps them apart in one case, and their animosities lead
them to a bloody massacre in the other. That sweeping difference is not
accidental.

But
the main characters in this final showdown are Superman and Mandrakk. Hearing
Mandrakk's demand that he die, Superman says no. Then, using a power we've
never known him to have before (shining light from his hands), Superman powers
the Miracle Machine and wishes for "the best for everyone."
Superman's allies, the Green Lanterns led by Hal Jordan and the Supermen of the
Multiverse led by Captain Marvel of Earth-5 show up. Then, having heard Superman's
wish, Nix Uotan arrives and – note the narration boxes – becomes the
narrator of the rest of the story. Nix Uotan, the Monitor, represents the
writer of this story, Grant Morrison, and declares, "This is between
Monitors now," meaning that the fight is between Alan Moore and Grant
Morrison. Uotan says, "Mandrakk! At my right hand stands Superman
himself." "Right hand" is a possible pun on "write
hand" and an indication that Superman and the writer stand allied against
the threat.

The
writer is infinitely powerful, so he summons an unbeatable team of heroes,
including the vengeful angels of God, the Green Lanterns, the Supermen, the Zoo
Crew of Captain Carrot (speaking of lighthearted storytelling), and the Forever
People. Mandrakk recognizes Uotan and says, "My son?" which is a
probable pun on "Morrison" being "Moore's son." Declaring
"There is no limit to what I can do" (because he is, after all, the
writer), Nix Uotan has his unbeatable team burn Ultraman and Mandrakk with heat
vision and the Green Lanterns spike the vampire Mandrakk through the heart.
Uotan tells Mandrakk and the now-skeletal Ultraman that the Multiverse has natural defenses
that he cannot imagine: Superman's and his allies' goodness will not allow Alan
Moore or any other writer to kill them off. End of story.

In
summary, the climax of FC #6 and #7
shows events that closely parallel Moore's previous stories, particularly
"Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Regarded in 1986 as one
of the greatest stories of all time, it did not, as Moore intended of that
story, Watchmen, and Twilight of the Superheroes, spell the
end of inspirational happy-ending superhero stories. The Monitor plot in Final Crisis was written, in large part,
to rebut Moore's message and Moore's intentions, and the close parallels
between Moore's and Morrison's scenes show us a large part of the meaning of Final Crisis in considerable detail, not
as vague and open-ended as readers' analyses in the past saw it. However, the
climax of the Monitor plot is only one part of the whole story, and with that
in hand as a kind of Rosetta Stone, let's look at the whole Monitor plot to decipher
all of Morrison's points.

The Monitor plot, Decoded

As the Alpha Lanterns seal
off "New Earth" (which is Earth-0), looking down on it, the Monitors
are on a still higher plane, looking
down on them. Concerned about the
loss of Earth-51 (off-screen, supposedly in Countdown,
but we don't know what form of disaster Morrison actually had in mind), the
Monitors repair the orrery of worlds (an orrery is, in its main sense, a moving
model of the solar system). The loss of Earth-51 is really Rox Ogama's fault,
but Ogama pretends to speak in Nix Uotan's defense. This scene is, first of
all, a close parallel to Hal Jordan's trial by the Guardians. When Zillo Valla,
via Rox Ogama, says that the Monitors have been contaminated by the life forms
on the germ worlds, it may be that they got the idea of framing an innocent
Monitor from the Alpha Monitors, whom they were just watching, and who were in
the process of framing Jordan. However, Uotan lacks Jordan's grace, and
actually gets punished, exiled to Earth-0.

Given what we learned about
writers above, what does this mean? If we cram that storyline into the existing
framework to fit the facts, we have Rox Ogama (Frank Miller and/or Doug Moench
and others writing stories where our heroes become antiheroes and some heroes
get ruined) bring us to a state where Nix Uotan (DC writers who celebrate the
heroic nature of heroes) have trouble thriving, but Weeja Dell (Marvel writers
like him) support him from afar. Clearly, Morrison chose the worlds of the
Monitors with care, and in an interview, he found those choices "somehow
appropriate." I think something like the above is Morrison's statement,
but we don't get a lot of elaboration. In FC
#2-4 all we see of the Monitor plot is a few panels that show Nix Uotan failing
in his fast food job while he draws comics (Final
Crisis itself; this is, for now, Grant Morrison) seeking a purpose. The
good writer is out in the world, trying to learn from it, but not making clear
progress.

We can also interpret Zillo
Valla's comment that "Time has entered [their] timeless world. Beginnings
and endings." Is it plausible that comic book writers once had no time in
their lives, no secrets or lovers? No, I'm sure they had those in the Thirties.
But what didn't have time, beginnings, or endings were the old-time stories. As I have discussed here, DC stories in the early days largely operated on
cyclical time, with nothing much ever changing. It was a gradual process from
about 1959 to 1969 in which the narrative shifted from cyclical to linear,
culminating with marriages (first: Barry Allen), deaths (first: Ferro Lad) and
growing up (first: Dick Grayson leaving for college). The stories suddenly had
beginnings and endings. And with that, the world of DC stories became a place
where heroes could die, introducing mature storytelling, perhaps, but also
creating a place among writers for would-be Mandrakks.

Then, in FC #5, Nix Uotan is thrown in a cell
with a few fellow outcasts, people who aren't susceptible to the Anti-Life
Equation. Somehow, by seeing things differently, by believing in a better world
(inspired by Weeja Dell = Marvel?), Uotan and his fellow outcasts (one of whom
is Metron in disguise) are capable of extraordinary things, like beating the
record at Rubik's Cube, and their imagination seems to have great power. This
begins the Fifth World and makes Nix Uotan a super-capable writer, the Judge of
All Evil, who sees comic book panels all around him in 360° vision. This seems
to show that some writers, Morrison included, just get it in a way that the people caught up in the storytelling of
Moore don't. Comic books aren't about trampled rights, torture, and
degradation. The real world has plenty of that for its outcasts. Comic books
are about the way out for the
dreamers and believers in heroes.

Within the pages of FC, this paves the way for Substory S,
in which Moore's temporary victory over heroism eventually fails. And when it's
over, the leaders of the Monitors who sought to exile Uotan (writers preferring
heroism) now take direction from them and decide to let the heroes be heroes,
without writers trampling them as Moore and Miller both did to Superman, in
order to make their own fame.

Now if this is the story of
writers, it covers an era from Moore's heyday around 1987 to 2008, by which
time Morrison and Johns had brought back Silver Age greatness, with the JLA and
Batman each getting Morrison's treatment, and Green Lantern getting Johns',
with the Barry Allen Flash returning in FC
itself.

Back at the beginning, Libra
explained that the superheroes win "because they truly believe their
actions are in accordance with a higher moral order." Moore's and Miller's
brand of storytelling took away the higher moral order, and this not only meant
that the superheroes could lose (literally die, as Moore wished) but the whole
superhero comics industry could lose. The Final Crisis is about the superheroes
facing this threat, from writers
(and editors and fans). But in Final
Crisis itself, we only see a single instance of the threat, with the heroes
prevailing between 1986 to 2008. What about the far future? That was the topic
of Superman Beyond, which in Superman
perception took place during FC, is
actually set logically long past it, in an indefinite future yet to come.

In Brightest Day: Green Lantern(s) in Final Crisis

As I mentioned in my earlier
post, the Darkseid plot implicitly breaks the heroes (superheroes, detectives,
and government agents alike) into different groups, with the Big Five standing
out as the only superheroes to strike effective blows against the big villain(s).
There's an asymmetry, though, in that Green Lantern and his allies ultimately
play no role in Darkseid's defeat, but show up to deliver the final blow to
Mandrakk. This violation of the pattern, I think, reflects the particular
publication history of Hal Jordan.

Hal Jordan, as noted
earlier, has a history of getting into trouble with the Guardians. This cycle
repeated over time and escalated, with Hal being punished at reduced powers on
Earth (in the acclaimed 1970s run of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams), sent into
exile in space (in the early 1980s, making him absent from Crisis on Infinite Earths), and later a murderous villain in the
guise of Parallax, ultimately killed off and removed from the DC lineup. Hal
got the full Alan Moore treatment, deconstructed and eliminated.

But it didn't last. Hal
returned to life and the DC lineup a few years before Final Crisis, and in the hands of Geoff Johns, rapidly became a top
seller, with the Green Lantern title and its related events contending, at
least temporarily, with Batman and Superman for the most popular DC character.
And this, I would offer, is why Hal earned a special role in facing off against
Mandrakk. Hal's story, as well as any character's, showed that Alan Moore's
thesis that optimistic superheroes had run their course was wrong. Ultimately,
Hal makes a better hero than he does a villain. And the character who had lost
his solo title a few times and was completely killed off came back to show that
his story as a hero is one that people want to read. When the Green Lanterns
are almost back to Earth, they see Monitor ships representing the higher plane
of writers. Hal tells Guy, "Whatever they are, they're our way in!" Ultimately,
writers put Hal back into the story, and that was his victory.

Another possible tidbit: In Superman Beyond, there is a panel that
summarizes, with one picture, the events of Crisis
on Infinite Earths. The superheroes we see include Superman, Dawnstar, and
Hal Jordan. Hal didn't actually appear in COIE,
a fact made more striking when one considers the huge number of obscure
characters who did appear. The panel in Superman
Beyond may be a glitch; then again, it may be a pointed retcon. We could
take that panel as an indication that the early, 1980s, phase of Hal's fall
from grace didn't happen, and that from here on out, we can consider him to
have taken part in that huge adventure after all.

Story about Story

As an overarching
observation about the style of Final
Crisis, note the rather intense nestedness of the storytelling. Dan Turpin
is telling a story. Libra tells a story. Investigating the Orion crime scene,
we have about a half a dozen characters trying to tell a story. And so on. In
the climax of FC #7, Wonder Woman and
Supergirl tell the story of FC itself
to children waiting to be shrunk and saved. Speaking through the fourth wall,
the incredibly miscellaneous quartet of Cassie Sandsmark, Red Devil, John
Stewart, and a Morrison invention named Iman ("magnet") talk to us about Superman. In a world where
superheroes inspire us, Superman inspires them.
He's the superheroes' superhero.

And Lois Lane tells a story
that appears in narration boxes on twelve different pages of FC #7. After that, Nix Uotan takes over.
And do you know what story first had Lois Lane telling a story? Action Comics #1. That's the beginning.
Nix Uotan, an avatar for Morrison, finished Final
Crisis #7. This is the story of all our stories. And what it said along the
way was that the best heroes come out on top. In fact, we see that Lois Lane's
last story ends up following Batman into the past, so that he can bring the
superhero symbols, his own included, into the future. This is yet another time
loop, and a time loop is a story that has no ending. So the heroes live on
forever and ever, in this case and many, many others. But a sideplot features a
more universal story, one that goes beyond, and focuses on Superman. It's Superman Beyond.

Superman Beyond

As things are going almost
literally to hell on Earth, Superman is called away by Zillo Valla who, if we
interpret correctly, represents "dark" stories that mean well, like Batman: Red Rain, but that turn our
heroes into monsters. See, there's a threat from Mandrakk that might destroy
everything, Lois Lane included. And the threat in the real world is, nobody's
going to like the comic books anymore if you kill all the good heroes, who
brought them to the comic books in the first place.

And Superman Beyond leaves the comic book world of Earth-0. It's about
something else, the higher level where the stories are stories. And there's not
just one Superman; there are the Superman of one comic book company (Fawcett's
Captain Marvel), and the Superman of another (Charlton's Captain Atom, here
looking more like Dr. Manhattan in yet another Alan Moore nod), A Nazi Earth-10
(AKA, Earth X, the Roman numeral for 10) Superman who speaks German, and the
evil anti-Superman Ultraman from Earth-3. These represent many instances of the
Platonic idea of Superman.

The problem is, the echo of
the harm that Alan Moore has done to the comics is threatening them all. This
destroyer, Echo of Midnight, may destroy many pitifully vulnerable worlds like
Earth-13 and Earth-20, later shown in Multiversity.
The Supermen dump Mandrakk's echo on the destroyed Earth-51 and then go off-path
to Limbo.

Limbo, as we can tell by the
cast of characters, is where the characters who aren't being written about
anymore end up. For Superman to end up here suggests that Superman is facing,
eventually, the threat of being killed off by the ruin of heroic superhero
comics.

Eventually, Captain Adam
realizes that Limbo not being a place, the rules that would destroy Superman
and Ultraman if they touched don't apply because nothing can happen. Merging
them, we get for the first time the Platonic Superman, an invention of Dax
Novu, and if Novu was the early Alan Moore, then I'm not sure how that fits
into the comic history timeline; Moore's work on Supreme came later. Perhaps
Dax Novu stands for all good, pre-Crisis writers, and then Dax Novu's creation of
the Thought Robot Superman could be anyone's from Jerry Siegel onward.

Though Final Crisis #7 gets the last word, the battle between Superman and
Mandrakk here is the real climax, because it's not Superman surviving one
writer or another, it's the idea of Superman defeating the idea of killing him.
If ever anyone wants to eliminate Superman, they're going to lose, because, as
Zillo Valla (clearly not simply Doug Moench or Frank Miller) tells us,
"the story of a child rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet" is
"a better story, one created to be unstoppable, indestructible!"
Being reminded of this, Mandrakk destroys Zillo Valla. In the real world, this
means that in trying to destroy heroic superheroes, Moore and his ilk would
destroy the darker, horror kind of comics that he likes, to his own chagrin,
yet Superman, a better idea, and his target, will survive! This battle isn't
taking place in 1986, 2008, or even 2017. It's taking place in an indefinite
future. Always, Superman will be threatened by people who don't like the idea
of him. Always, he will prevail and continue to be a story that inspires
people. This is his ultimate, infinite, "beyond" victory, but it was
published before, and sets the stage for, the victory over Moore and WHTTMOT's
Substory S, that is the climax of Final
Crisis.

At the end of Superman Beyond, Superman gets what he
was looking for. It turns out that he can save Lois Lane just by being
Superman, because that's what Superman does. He answers Mandrakk and Alan Moore
that the story of Superman doesn't end (see below): It is to be continued.

He ends the story with a
wink, which readers recall from the end of "Whatever Happened to the Man
of Tomorrow?" In fact, the wink is an older Superman story motif, primarily
from animated/live media including the George Reeves TV series, the 1966
Filmation animated series, and originating, apparently, with 1940s Fleischer animation.

The Infinite Book!

In Limbo, the Supermen
encounter an infinite book, one with every story in it. This is a wonderful
cosmic idea, although, alas, one that the theory of computer science shows to
be impossible. This is the subject of one additional likely reference to Alan
Moore. Moore's cosmology of League of
Extraordinary Gentleman is a world in which every story ever told is true.
The connection between these two is suggested most strongly when Mandrakk, near
the end of Superman Beyond #2, says,
in the first panel of his last appearance, "The whole of existence in a
single book." This is a strange point for Mandrakk to emphasize as he
speaks to the camera. Time and time again, when a Morrison story presents a
character uttering a nonsequitur, or an unexpected cameo, this is a clue of
significance that deserves careful attention. In this case, it seems odd that
Mandrakk would find the book to be a powerful weapon, though we may ponder if
it is; I suspect that the significance here is likely yet another
Mandrakk-Moore connection.

At the end of Superman Beyond #1, Ultraman reveals
that the infinite book has an ending, and in the end, evil wins! I have to say,
I found that pretty chilling as a reader. This book seems to carry the weight
of authority, like the book of Destiny in older comics, and if it ends with
evil, wow, our story is headed somewhere bad, isn't it? Ultraman sure thinks
so. Superman says it merely sounds like a challenge to him.

As I finished my first and
second and tenth readings of Superman
Beyond, I never found a resolution to my concern. Obviously, we don't see
evil win, so it seems as though the matter is simply ignored. It isn't. It's
addressed on the last page, impossible to miss, in huge letters. Superman's
answer to Mandrakk, and Grant Morrison's answer on Superman's behalf to Alan
Moore, is "To Be Continued." Superman stories don't end. In Superman's
universe, it is always to be continued, and we never get to the end of the
book. But if we did, sure, evil would win in the end. That's how that book must
end. But Superman's book loops on forever. And this is why, in interviews,
Morrison can say that when you understand Final
Crisis, you'll see why it is the final one. This is about how the heroes
and their end interrelate. And the way they interrelate is that the big
ones, at least Superman if not the entire Big Five, are all "to
be continued."

In fact, the first word we
read from the infinite book is "Previously!" That's not how a story
starts; it's how a story continues. Put that and Superman's epitaph together,
and you get a serial format, beginning each issue with "Previously"
and ending each with "To be continued." Superman's story goes on.
They never end. And, as Morrison defines Mandrakk in an interview:

"Mandrakk
is actually the ultimate evil where there's no hope. The grave. He's entropy, I
suppose. No matter how hard you try, this entity will consume the universe and
you'll be sucked into the gaping, bulging Black Hole of Mandrakk."

By maintaining hope, by
never entering the grave, by never being consumed, Superman thereby beats
Mandrakk, not just the Alan Moore of 1986 but whatever other Mandrakks arise in
the future. He emerges triumphant from every crisis, and that is the story of
the Final Crisis.

To Be Continued

Since
2009, DC's continuity has been reconfigured twice. Final Crisis is well in the rearview mirror and its yearlong tour as
DC's most talked about event has long since past. It stuck in my mind the whole
time. And it felt like I didn't get it, and I didn't read anything suggesting
that anyone else really got it. I
hope this analysis, years after the fact, revives the story in at least some
readers' minds, and enters the scattered trail of blog posts and sub-reddits to
transform it into a story that people get, and that people enjoy to its
fullest.

I
believe that people who have seen the alignment of "Whatever Happened to
the Man of Tomorrow" and Final
Crisis will not be able to think of this story the same way afterwards. I
invite people to read Moore's story again, then read Final Crisis again, and see if it isn't a new experience. I hope
that people who shrugged off Mandrakk's bizarre appearance the first time
around will see it now as an essential part of the story, the main part of the story, and see how
Superman and his allies defeat Mandrakk as a wonderful victory. And if a story
that ended nine years ago can enter readers' minds again, that would really
prove the main thesis of the Monitor plot, that superhero stories don't really
end, and that they are always To Be Continued.